Railway hopper cars with one or more hoppers are used for transporting commodities such as dry bulk. For example, hopper cars are frequently used to transport coal, sand, metal ores, ballast, aggregates, grain, and any other type of lading material. Commodities are discharged from openings typically located at or near the bottom of a hopper. A door or gate assembly is used to open and close discharge openings of a hopper. A hopper car may use multiple gate assemblies to discharge commodities at various locations along the length of the hopper car.
Existing hopper cars are configured such that all of the gate assemblies open simultaneously when a hopper car has multiple gate assemblies. Opening all of the gate assemblies at once may increase the amount of force used to open the gates. The system receiving the unloaded commodity may also be overwhelmed by too much product being discharged at once. Other existing systems require a hopper car to have separate opening mechanisms for each gate assembly. In these systems, each of the opening mechanisms is controlled independently. Having to separately open gate assemblies increases the time, labor, and complexity associated with operating the gate assemblies. Thus, it is desirable to provide more flexibility and options when discharging commodities.